


Anchor

by Glinda



Series: Sappho Quotes Prompt Table [2]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, Female Friendship, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Loneliness, Self-Acceptance, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 08:56:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7611697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holtz is no longer just anchored to this world by Abby.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anchor

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my prompt table from [](http://femslashficlets.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://femslashficlets.dreamwidth.org/)**femslashficlets**. The prompt was: Sappho 9: you came and I was crazy for you

Jillian learned early that she was difficult to love. More importantly for everyday life, that she was hard to like. As a little kid she didn’t realise she was strange, but at school she learned early that the way she was wasn’t ‘normal’ or ‘acceptable’ to most of the other kids. Too smart, too odd, too honest, too bound up in her own sense of right and wrong, too headstrong and openhearted. She learned early how much children like to belong, to be like others, part of the pack. And she tried, oh how she tried, but no matter what she did she was always seemed to mess it up, to be too much herself. By the time she reached Junior High she had accepted that there was no point trying, no point making herself miserable trying to be someone she wasn’t. Someone will want to be her friend, just the way she is.

It’s not until she meets Abby Yates fifteen years later that her childish optimism is proved right.

Logic tells her that Abby won’t abandon her just because Erin’s back on the scene, but experience whispers its only a matter of time. She’s glad for Abby; pleased that her best (only) friend is no longer walking around with huge sucking emotional wound in her heart. But her own heart is heavy every time she sees them together. It’s a fight to not lash out at Erin with her words or actions, so she settles for flirting awkwardly and obnoxiously with Erin. It’s an old defence method but it makes her feel a little better. Nonetheless, Abby continues to make space for Holtz in her life. Tucking an arm through hers when they walk somewhere, sitting firmly between Holtz and Erin, making it clear that they are both her friends, that there is room in her heart for two. It’s never occurred to her that she had the ability to make someone like Erin jealous; that all her history and in-jokes with Abby might inspire envy in Erin’s guilty heart. Good, Holtz thinks viciously, you should feel guilty, you hurt the best and kindest person I’ve ever known. It’s not until Erin goes plunging into the portal after Abby that it occurs to her the truth of what Abby had told Holtz years before: Erin had always needed Abby more than Abby needed Erin. She and Patty pull the other two back out of the portal just in the nick of time and for the first time Holtz can be unreservedly glad to see them both together.

She couldn’t have done that without Patty. Not only in terms of physicality, she’s strong but not pull two people out of a supernatural portal by herself strong, but also psychologically, somewhere along the line she’s come to rely on Patty. Her new friend feels like an immovable anchor on the end of the rope with her. In the sea of overwhelming emotions and declarations that the battle and its aftermath have stirred up, Patty’s hand on her arm and solid presence at her side is reassuring and grounding whenever she feels adrift. A reminder that Holtz is no longer anchored to just Abby.

Holtz knows there must have been a point where Patty sneaked under her defences and lodged herself in Holtz’s heart, but Holtz can’t for the life of her trace where it was. Perhaps it was as simple as Patty looking for a place to fit within the team. That she’d seen the shifting sands of Erin and Abby’s recently rebuilt friendship and Holtz had seemed steady and secure in comparison. Holtz cannot be certain she just knows that she starts to find Patty at her side more often that not, demanding her attention whenever Abi and Erin are off being well Abby&Erin. Rolling her eyes or applying sarcasm, telling oddly fascinating historical anecdotes or listening patiently to Holtz’s rambles about her latest invention. It probably helps that their sense of humour has a good amount of cross-over so they crack each other up all the time. That the weirder Holtz is the warmer Patty’s smile gets, right up to when she nearly explodes something and Patty tips over into overprotectiveness and fusses round them all like a mother hen, insisting that clearly the real reason they need her is that they’ll blow themselves up without her. She can’t push this one away Holtz realises, when you push Patty she pushes right back; the relief is so great that it surprises Holtz into uncontrollable laughter. Which only causes Patty to rant harder, theatrics over a thin veneer of actual affection and real fear that Erin is quick to try to assuage while Abby sets about rescuing Holtz from her own destruction.

“We’re keeping this one, yeah?” asks Abby wryly, as though she already knows the answer.

“Yeah. Definitely keeping this one,” agrees Holtz keeping her voice deliberately deadpan. Abby’s fond smile tells Holtz she’s not fooled for a moment.

It’s not until days later when she’s in the middle of explaining to Patty about how exactly her new invention will work that she realises that Patty has no idea what she’s talking about, but is still watching her with a look of contented fascination. She doesn’t mean to flirt, but by now its like a instinctive defence response. Clumsy and raw and weirdly effective. It doesn’t have the usual response though, instead Patty meets her step by step and move by move as though she’s been waiting for this for a while now. Her smile is predatory and her kisses are fierce. Holtz has had several lovers who wanted her despite her weirdness; Patty is the first to want her because of it. For someone as certain of who she is as Patty, Holtz supposes it’s only natural that someone being entirely themselves should be attractive to her.

“This one,” she whispers against Patty’s skin as she sleeps, “let me keep this one.”  



End file.
